XPS 13 refreshed - now with 16GB RAM

I've been meaning to check out the xps windows forum to find out. I'll do so tomorrow.

So what happened with the Dell of a couple years ago when I could really get the configurations custom built? With orthogonal choices of CPU, RAM, disk configuration, display resolution, wireless chip set (sometimes 2-3 Intel and 2 non Intel options). The online order pages now like I walked into a Best Buy and I have 5 options to choose from total.

Ronald

So what happened with the Dell of a couple years ago when I could really get the configurations custom built? With orthogonal choices of CPU, RAM, disk configuration, display resolution, wireless chip set (sometimes 2-3 Intel and 2 non Intel options). The online order pages now like I walked into a Best Buy and I have 5 options to choose from total. Ronald

Right so the wireless card in the new xps 13 - DW1820A 2x2 802.11ac 2.4/5GHz, thats broadcom?

Apparently both the broadcom and the intel have issues in Windows as well: forum.notebookreview.com/.../page-2

Thanks for your detailed reply. I didn't see it until today. You're right, the firmware isn't found. I reinstalled the Dell bt-dw18560 firmware, but that didn't help. Where did you find the fw-0a5c_216f.hcd package?

I managed to send the post while the forum was under moderation - so while I wrote it a two days ago, it only was moderated  today :-)

the bt-dw1560-firmware_1.0_all.deb contains the file as /usr/share/bt-dw1560/firmware/fw-0a5c_216f.hcd in it's data-payload. The install script copies it to /lib/firmware and does a dpkg-divert to keep track of that copy.

I'm not using a deb-based distro, so I simply extracted the file and created symlinks named as the driver did expect them (it looks in a brcm subfolder for example, and with the BCM.... names)

$ ls -l /lib/firmware/brcm/ |grep fw-0a5c_216f.hcd
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root    16 Jul  3 12:30 BCM20702A0-0a5c-216f.hcd -> fw-0a5c_216f.hcd
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root    16 Okt 10 21:59 BCM20702A1-0a5c-216f.hcd -> fw-0a5c_216f.hcd
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 35080 Jul  3 12:28 fw-0a5c_216f.hcd

That's odd: when I install bt-dw1560 no .hcd files appear in /lib/firmware/brcm, only these:

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 269595 nov 24  2014 bcm4329-fullmac-4.bin
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  96224 dec  1  2014 bcm43xx-0.fw
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    180 dec  1  2014 bcm43xx_hdr-0.fw
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 397312 dec  1  2014 brcmfmac43143.bin
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 385067 aug  3 15:14 brcmfmac43143-sdio.bin
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 348160 nov 24  2014 brcmfmac43236b.bin
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 455745 dec  1  2014 brcmfmac43241b0-sdio.bin
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 403855 dec  1  2014 brcmfmac43241b4-sdio.bin
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 253748 dec  1  2014 brcmfmac4329-sdio.bin
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 222126 dec  1  2014 brcmfmac4330-sdio.bin
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 451566 dec  1  2014 brcmfmac4334-sdio.bin
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 569291 dec  1  2014 brcmfmac4335-sdio.bin
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 219557 dec  1  2014 brcmfmac43362-sdio.bin
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 507752 jul 30 22:13 brcmfmac4354-sdio.bin

Fixed it. The .hcd file was in /lib/firmware, and I put a symlink to it in /lib/firmware/brcm named BCM20702A0-0a5c. Thanks for all your help.

Unfortunately, this seems to have brought back kernel panics. Twice now I have come back to a very warm laptop with blinking caps lock key. Judging from the kernel log it apparently wakes up immediately after entering sleep state.  I hadn't had any problems like this for a long time. Can it have something to do with the bluetooth driver/firmware?

Can it have something to do with the bluetooth driver/firmware?

I don't think it is the bluetooth firmware. But the new broadcom wifi driver doesn't include the important fix for the crashers/panics unfortunately.

So if you updated to the new driver yourself, make sure you apply the patch from

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/bcmwl/+bug/1415880

I don't have panics or crashes anymore. Only problems I have left are

* double-space when using edges of spacebar (hope that bios update will fix that)

* touchpad sometimes stopping to work after looong update. Might have to do with my distro though, as it has psmouse built into the kernel and not as module, so that might be the cause for that. It happens rarely, so it's not too bad.

Argh. So annoying. I'm starting to consider replacing the cursed broadcom card with the intel. It will probably be a while before broadcom fixes their firmware.

Thanks. You're right, I had patched the previous version, but not this one. I'll let you know whether it works now.

I don't have the double-space problem (I type too slow for that to be an issue), but I wish the touchpad were capable of palm detection.

It's still not quite right: after resuming from suspend, bluetooth doesn't come on, and dmesg contains the errors bluetooth hci0: firmware: brcm/BCM20702A0-0a5c-216f.hcd will not be loaded

[two hours later:] ...... and after another suspend/resume it's back on. What could be going on here?